‘To remember is not to recall facts; it is to picture those you loved in whatever way best suits them.’

There’s an interesting thing about writing. You have to believe that something can exist before it is real and yet even when you are holding your new book it contains so much, well, fiction. I began writing my second novel, 94 Degrees in the Shade because I had to find some way to react to Cambridge.

This is exactly the same reason I wrote my first novel, Canning Circus which was the only way I then had to respond to Nottingham and to what was happening to me in that city.

I did not know and probably will never know why I feel the need to respond to place in this way, not least to adopted places. What I do know is that both were in my thoughts and in my daily life for years before I could write about them. Nottingham remains to my mind the most intricately absorbing large city in England. I grew to know it over a long period in my life and it will forever be the city that made me feel free. Nottingham is a place of layers, of one thousand eight hundred caves, of unravelling and Canning Circus will always be for me a novel of discovery. The strangest aspect of Canning Circus though is that it is actually an autobiography, and it is strange because my own story was not set in Nottingham. I used the city of caves to hide or perhaps even to penetrate my real story, which can only ever be about Belfast and about Ireland. It seemed safer and more entertaining to transpose real people, my family and my sense of joy and loss into the world of Canning Circus, which is undeniably a world of fairytale. Ghosts, Robin Hood, Shakespeare and a list of characters named for caves and pubs was the most direct way I knew to be indirect. In a world of reality consumption on television and of reality avoidance in gaming and film my belief in the language of novels is rooted in their ability to be real and to be unreal at the same time. This, I suppose is the reason people write and read and love fiction.

94 Degrees in the Shade will be released at the end of the month, although I received my advance copies yesterday. I took a copy to bed and held it, running my thumbs over the cover for far longer than I had intended. 94 is a novel about the Cambridge Spies but unlike any of the plethora of other books about them, in that it is deliberately the ‘story’ of them before they became what they were to become. It describes them as young men, not yet (in)famous but already fiercely intelligent and capable of intense mutual analysis. 1930s Cambridge has always seemed to me to be one of the most exciting and intellectually dangerous places to experience being the age of 20. Anthony Blunt was a little older but the others, with the possible exception of Kim Philby were finding their way in the beautiful immediate setting of the university but surrounded by the violence of the ugly world beyond. Every person has a reason to rebel and theirs’ was to reject that which was intended to protect them. They simply didn’t believe that Britain and the US could beat Facism. For Burgess in particular the Soviets, coupled with their intoxicating, aggressive simplicity were too attractive to dismiss.

My novel is narrated by Daniel Cyprian, one of the few purely fictional characters in 94. He has spent his life at Trinity College and narrates the book, which is also his diary from his rest home. His recall allows for a depiction of pre-war Cambridge and a modern day interaction with one of the nurses assigned to him in his old age. I have always admired the character device of Nick Carroway used by Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, that of the unreliable narrator and Daniel Cyprian is just about as unreliable as they come. This does not mean he is incapable of being right. Cyprian’s recollections, or as they are described in the novel’s subtitle, ‘A Diary of Lies,’ lead us through the lives of the emerging spies as students of Cambridge University. Cyprian recalls some facts in immense detail, particularly the food served at College dinners and yet, in other more epic encounters he may be wide of the mark. This was a complex time in England and Cyprian’s mind may not be what it appears.

As was the case with Nottingham in Canning Circus, Cambridge in 94 is carefully drawn as one of the characters. Apart from scenes in London and at Dartington in South Devon the entire novel moves up and down Trinity Street, along the river to Grantchester and in and out of College rooms. Writing has to have a sense of enjoyment and writing 94 was a wonderful experience. Significant research was needed on College and period detail but also on the extended dialogue of characters discussing complex mathematics and art history. At a similar length of research time and final production, as with most novels 94 is effectively a PhD in its field. In this case, Cambridge University as the base for reactionary communist politics in Britain in the 1930s. Always a fascinating topic but perhaps even more enjoyable in fictional form.

I have used a number of tricks – a word I prefer to ‘technique’ in the book. Anti-linear, non-linear or multi-linear narratives are the ones I enjoy reading most and in particular in the works of Jeanette Winterson, Salman Rusdie, Italo Calvino and Virginia Woolf. 94 has some surprises for the reader beyond its dual time spans. I blend allegory with flashback and reincarnation with memory, drawing inspiration in particular from Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry. But this is ultimately a novel about truth and loss. 94 is tragic but I hope full of joy too. There is an undercurrent and an awareness of death set against pure and powerful love. The city itself is shown to be capable of both cruelty and beauty. Cambridge after all is concerned with the discovery and preservation of truths. The fundamental question behind 94 Degrees in the Shade however, is how can we be certain that truth even exists?

‘They were extraordinary people, those four men. They believed in things. They were certain they could change the world. They thought they were untouchable and unrestrained and right.’

My new novel, 94 Degrees in the Shade will be released on the 29th September 2016 in the UK.

From the back cover:

94 Degrees in the Shade is the story of a group of idealistic young people who meet by chance, become friends by opportunity, and change their world and ours by miscalculation. In the 1930s, when the differences between excuses and lies are concealed, how can anyone know or record the truth? Daniel Cyprian, a fellow student of theirs, remembers the ‘Cambridge Spies’ in his diary but can even he be trusted?

Christopher Pressler’s powerful novel explores lives repeated and loves tragically echoed. In the ageless city of truth and loss, it is a recollection of the dangerous beauty of Cambridge itself.

From the Press release:

Title: 94 Degrees in the Shade: A Diary of LiesAuthor: Christopher Pressler

ISBN: 9781784650780

Genre: Modern and Contemporary Fiction

Price: £8.99

Imprint: Vanguard Press

Pegasus Publishers are pleased to announce the publication of 94 Degrees in the Shade: A Diary of Lies by Christopher Pressler, available from bookshops or direct from the publisher.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Christopher Pressler’s book, 94 Degrees in the Shade: A Diary of Lies gives us a dramatic interpretation of the balmy student days of the 1930s when the infamous ‘Cambridge Spies’ were in residence at Cambridge University. Here we have super-spies Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt enjoying life as they ate, drank and punted on the river, all the time extolling the virtues of Communism and decrying the rise of Oswald Mosely and his Blackshirts.

In this exciting book, fellow student Daniel Cyprian tells of his time with the young Communists, as well as several other famous figures, including Alan Turing.

I recently gave a presentation as part of both Open Access week and the year-long series of lectures which are launching the new strategy foe the Library of Trinity College Dublin. It was a great honour to be asked to speak at Trinity alongside fellow academics, not least Professor Geoffrey Crossick, Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of London. In the interests of open access to humanities research here is a version of my text given at Trinity.

An Admission

The world of books is more complex than ever. I must admit to being involved in it through many endeavors. As an academic, I have both bought and written books and attempted to ensure their long-term accessibility in both print and digital form through university libraries. As a literary author, I write books that are not released on open access and have little personal interest in them being so, for the literary book as ‘object’ is a part of its art form. As a Board member of the Irish Writers Centre I work with the body of professional writers in this country for whom sales are the primary income. As the director of a research centre I produce books that for the most part few people wish to read, or at least purchase owing to their cost. In this last case though, I am committed to Open Access where possible, if only to increase visibility. I have also established open access repositories and run a university press, which at one institution held opposing aims in terms of their respective business models. So, in the catholic world of publishing I will admit to having fingers in many pies – some of which I have made myself, and others that are selected for customers. From this perspective, the monograph not only exists in a world of Open Access but also in a wildly varying ecosphere of books and readers, each being as multi-faceted as the other.

An Assumption

In contributing to a discussion on the future of the monograph I would like to exempt many different kinds of books, and also to an extent, almost as many different kinds of readers. The monograph as presented for discussion here is a work of coherent thematic argument that is the product of (usually) one or perhaps more researchers. This ‘object’ remains the highest standard form for research communication in the broader humanities. It is frequently written for a comparatively small audience, if it truly seeks an audience at all and as Dr Martin Paul Eve of Birkbeck has quipped, it is commonly regulated at around the 80,000-word mark in many disciplines because ‘it is a well-known fact that academics must be told when to stop speaking.’ So, the monograph in this traditional sense could be argued to be primarily the product of academic research in the humanities, in the past published ideally by a reputable publishing house and held in as many libraries as possible – not least because it is there that its enclosed expert audience were most likely to find it, and also because no one else could afford to buy it anyway.

An Assertion

The role of libraries in particular in the production and use of this specific form of the monograph remains essential. We are well past the time when it should be necessary to note explicitly that ‘libraries’ operate in both physical and virtual forms, although it is usually still beneficial to do so. Libraries at their best are a direct reflection of their institution and of the international research communities they partner. Libraries are more than another university department. They are, or at least can be an intrinsic part of the research process. In our material and digital collections can be found the inspiration for new discoveries and their substance through citation and peer encounter. The cycle continues when a new monograph, germinated from its predecessors joins them to allow the process to begin again. The web has given libraries more relevance, not less and on shelves and servers now sits the academic monograph. The question perhaps from a library perspective is, what are the challenges to placing it and keeping it there?

An Observation

Whether Open Access or not, the balance between our shelves and our servers is shifting rapidly and is doing so for a number of reasons. The Library building is now more popular than ever with our students and they wish to use it in different ways and for longer. The monograph is also a part of this world. Libraries must address the tensions between undergraduate and research use, between collaborative learning space and shelving, between print and digital spend, between increased published content and a swollen demand to read it and perhaps most importantly between ever higher pricing models and static or diminishing budgets. Libraries have to do far more, with comparatively far less than we have ever had to do in our history. However, it is critical in any discussion of Open Access monographs to consider the real impact on a library’s ability to care for them in an age of extraordinary pressure.

A Digression

As someone who has been involved in the Open Access journey since its earliest days I believe it is important to remember that Gold Open Access was never the intended destination. There were of course deeply held convictions that access to knowledge should not be hindered by either permissions or pricing, especially so by the Developing World. However, the ‘plan’ could be summarised as to transform the scholarly communications model. The status quo consists of three parts: researchers, publishers and libraries. Many of us held a perhaps unrealistic aim that academic publishing in part could be profoundly altered, whereby researchers would provide uninvigilated peer review within their own disciplines and libraries would publish that research in repositories or in coordinated overlay journals. Many experimental models were attempted to ensure that knowledge was not paid for twice by universities – in an academic salary and again in a journal subscription. Many models are still in existence and new ones continue to emerge but the transformation to full Green Open Access with peer review outside of publishing houses has not been achieved.

An Apprehension

The appearance and general acceptance in journal publishing of Article Processing Charges, or APC’s is at best a compromise; at worst it might be seen as a sign of failure. It could be argued that the research communications model now pays for knowledge three times, once to investigators, again in library subscriptions and again in APC’s to deliver online Open Access. Additionally, this third payment often only releases knowledge following months or years of embargo and so ageing and weakening it in terms of usefulness to other researchers. Even with rigorous monitoring of the infamous practice of ‘double-dipping,’ where a publisher charges for both subscriptions and Open Access, who can really be sure that no longer occurs via inflated single-priced licensing? The emergent use of the term BPC’s or Book Processing Charges with relation to Open Access monographs is of immense concern. Monographs already cost funding agencies and universities in the salaries and overheads of their academics. Monographs are already too expensive to be expansively purchased by libraries, which are themselves under pressure to deliver almost conflicting multiple services. To add a third cost to the publication of a monograph in the full knowledge of the academy’s struggle with journals is not a journey to be undertaken lightly.

A Reflection

We do now, however frayed and unintended it is, live in a world of Open Access. Almost 4,000 of the 21,000 journals indexed in Scopus are now published in some open form. The question remains, should the academic monograph also operate in a similar hybrid world? APC’s and BPC’s shift spend from readers, which in the case of monographs means mainly libraries to authors. However, as long as subscription publication continues to predominate, the institutional funds that could potentially pay open access publication fees are still locked into subscriptions to those same journals. And from an institutional or funding agency perspective, does it matter who is paying for research dissemination anyway? It is still money that is not being spent on research itself. What is not in doubt is that universities currently pay the full cost of publication through subscriptions and that those subscriptions are by default closed access. Any other cost is new and additional to an individual university, whether that is an APC or an institutional repository. Surely the same tortuous fate awaits the monograph?

A Differentiation

Beyond academic writing in the humanities it is unusual to find any other kind of writer receiving a salary from anything other than sales, and that a proportion of those sales also allows literary publishers to invest in new authors. Only the tiniest numbers of academic monographs produce royalties that exceed an academic salary. That said, the publication of monographs is essential to retaining and developing an academic career in the humanities. Equally, the accumulation of a high-value and high-quality backlist by a publishing house is critical to its own growth and reputation. Might it be suggested, given the fundamental differences in journal and monograph publishing that the acute issue for the future of monographs in a world of Open Access is not another agonising battle over publishing models but rather one of confidence and conviction?

A Proposition

Writing a monograph is an act of almost unparalleled commitment. The demands of income from publishers and the pressures of expenditure from libraries are not the principal concern of the monograph’s own author. Writing is hard and research is hard. Producing something of value and regard is harder still. There is something faintly unrefined about seeking further ways to profit from this venerable human exercise, although the figures of course do have to add up. In the case of journals, I remain unconvinced of the real value added by the publishing industry, but with regards to monographs it is obvious. No other model could produce and distribute a physical object of significance in terms of content and design. However, does releasing its text for free remove the demand from readers (and authors) to hold the physical copy or download a high-quality digital version? Evidence from other parts of the world of books (and indeed etheses) suggests that a lower quality online version only encourages sales, widens interest, broadens readerships, raises awareness and enhances the reputations of both author and publisher. It could be proposed that to place a price or permissions obstacle in front of simple text is a wasted effort. To spend years experimenting with non-commercial platforms will fail without an almost impossible to achieve global shift in research practices. To assume that a low quality electronic version will remove the joy of writing, designing, publishing, marketing, buying, cataloguing, archiving and sharing a jointly available print or premium digital monograph is to lack assurance in the demand for quality.

An Exhortation

The academic monograph as discussed here is a product of the imagination. This process should not stop with the author’s final sentence. To publishers I would ask please experiment with the book and do not be afraid of allowing new audiences free access to it – please permit the transgression of open text onto the web. You will secure greater interest and sales. To authors I would advise pride in an appropriate retention of print where that is the best form of research communication and a conviction to bring that quality to paid-for digital versions, alongside fearlessness in the release of unadorned text online for free. And to libraries, in addition to advocating Open Access and negotiating digital deals, I would propose collecting monographs in print, even consortially whenever they can. The monograph as object is more than its text and in any case, it is not yet possible to secure its digital version in perpetuity. Perhaps, as might be the case with my own involvement in the world of publishing – it is fine to bake more than one kind of pie. Just don’t overcharge your customers.

]]>http://www.christopherpressler.com/?feed=rss2&p=4750New novel to be published…http://www.christopherpressler.com/?p=447
http://www.christopherpressler.com/?p=447#commentsSun, 01 Mar 2015 10:55:26 +0000http://www.christopherpressler.com/?p=44794 Degrees in the Shade – my new novel to be published in 2016…

94 Degrees in the Shade is the new novel by Christopher Pressler and will be published by Pegasus in 2016. 94 Degrees in the Shade is set over an academic year at Cambridge in the 1930’s and also in contemporary Cambridge at the end of the narrator’s life. It is a novel about lies, love, loss and mathematics.

The principal characters alongside a very dubious narrator are the Cambridge Spies; Blunt, Burgess, Maclean, Philby and also, Michael Straight. Many other characters appear from this remarkable period, notably Wittgenstein, Alan Turing and Julian Bell. In the modern scenes, the focus is on the disturbed Michael Gabriel, who the narrator, whilst writing his memoir, believes to be a nursing assistant assigned to care for him as he dies.

94 Degrees in the Shade is named for a painting held in the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, and its depiction of a young man at the end of summer provides the opening scene of the novel. Its title also hints at the difficulty of hiding from the glare of truth – or capture.

94 Degrees in the Shade is the story of a group of people who meet by chance, become friends by opportunity and change their world by mistake, or so Blunt claims. It is also a story where the mathematics of certainty suggests that accidents cannot happen – lies too easily become excuses.

Image of ’94 Degrees in the Shade’ by L. Alma-Tadema, from Fitwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge catalogue.

It is with great pleasure that I would like to invite you to DRHA Dublin 2015 – Digital World. Digital Responses, hosted by Dublin City University in partnership with the National Library of Ireland and the Digital Arts and Humanities Institute, Royal Irish Academy. Our conference takes place 30th August to 2nd September 2015 in the vibrant Irish capital city of Dublin and will include contributions from an exciting range of keynote speakers from across the world. This is an historic moment too for the Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts Conference as it is the first time the event has been hosted by a university outside the United Kingdom.

We trust that delegates and visitors to DRHA Dublin 2015 will have an engaging and very special experience. Please visit our website where you will find more information on the conference and key registration and proposal submission dates.

Táimid ag tnúth le tú a fheiceáil i mBaile Átha Cliath

Christopher Pressler
Director of Library Services and Humanities Archive Research Centre, Dublin City University

I recently completed a piece of work for Research Libraries UK on the ideas and options associated under the broad title of the National Digitisation Review. RLUK published the report recently and I’d be happy to receive comments, suggestions and further ideas on this important area of continuing development for libraries. There has been a considerable level of interest nationally and internationally in the report and so I will be working with colleagues on ideas of where to take this discussion next. Please do get in contact, as many already have to plan the next stage of work.

In presenting this briefing paper for RLUK, it might be helpful to consider the question ‘Why are we even talking about a national approach to digitisation?’ It has been some years since substantive funding has been available for significant national programmes. Large research libraries are facing many competing challenges, to the point where it may be possible to say that libraries now are asked to resolve greater resource tensions than any before the information age. Planning for change in one of the most dynamic contexts of the modern university, that of information provision requires flexibility beyond the norm.

In answering the question ‘why’ we need to consider what we mean by digitisation now. It is different from even the recent past, where valuable projects placed prized objects online. It is different too, from the shift in print to electronic journals. It is different again from the addition to hand-held devices known as the codex of those carrying the name Kindle. Digitisation now is so broad as to include all these aspects; digital special collections, online scholarly communications and, more quickly than we may be prepared for, comprehensive digital monographs.

The question ‘why digitise’ is the real strategic one, rather than ‘how would we digitise.’ For our libraries to digitise (and by that we mean become full digital entities, not only sponsors of specific projects), our universities also need to share that vision. One of the myths surrounding the word digitisation is that it is an activity associated with the humanities. To digitise no longer solely means photographing historic materials. To digitise now has meaning for all parts of the library and the university it serves, just as it now means something different to almost all other sectors in the contemporary workplace – the word digitise could be said now to mean ‘acting in the digital age.’

It is not new to state that digital information is growing. Hathi is genuinely leading the way in the delivery of digital monographs, 76% of which are from between the years 1900 and 2000. The UK National Archives deliver over 200 online documents for every one of the 600,000 ordered annually in the reading rooms. It has been estimated by the RIN that UK scholars alone, download more than 100 million full-text articles per year. The five deposit libraries and the British Library now include e-deposit in their collective remit, an important indicator that perhaps a broader definition of digitisation as a cultural and professional term can now be said to include born digital materials.

In balancing the many competing demands on the university library in a maturing digital age, there is a risk that digitisation as a term becomes stuck in the age of the, otherwise still valuable, era of RSLP. There is another risk that without a redefinition digitisation is seen, when drawing up priorities at institutional and national level, as nothing more than a luxury.

2015 has begun with the passing of a great friend. Bob Gilmore and I both worked at Dartington College of Arts but our lives had also crossed many years previously when I was an undergraduate at Queen’s University Belfast and Bob was a doctoral student there. We rediscovered one another when I attended a research symposium given by Professor Frank Denyer at Dartington. I kept glancing over at Bob. He was doing the same and afterwards, as soon as we both opened our mouths our shared Northern Irish accents triggered the connection. From that moment, he and I were the closest of friends at Dartington.

Friendship with Bob would have been enough, but we also decided to spend some time making music and we performed over forty times together in hugely varied programmes from Martinu to Stockhausen. I am sure there are many people who have a similar experience, as company and music were Bob’s two most treasured activities. He was a close friend to many people but Elizabeth, his partner and Ben, his wonderfully talented son were of course the most important people in his life. Bob though was endlessly giving of himself to others, and I believe that was at the root of his formidable musicality. Indeed, I believe that Bob should be recognised, as well as a life-changing friend, brilliant research academic and inspiring teacher, as one of the finest Irish pianists of his generation. Anyone who has been on stage alongside those fiery, consummately professional eyes will know he was a rare kind of genius and an effortless virtuoso in his chosen genres.

Dartington College of Arts was central to Bob’s worldview. It was a college of considerable international stature in a setting of extraordinary beauty. Dartington was a place of individual freedom and of collective experiment. I know from talking with Bob that our shared late-twentieth century Northern Irish upbringing gave Dartington a power and influence of a very particular kind for us. Belfast in the 1970’s and 1980’s was a place of terror, constant fear and indescribable violence; Bob has summed this up in the phrase ‘utterly, utterly shite.’ He and I used to say that we would only really talk about ‘The Troubles’ to other people from Northern Ireland. This may be unproductively exclusive but it also produces in the Northern Irish an intimacy amongst compatriots often only found in the world’s dysfunctional societies.

We agreed there were two exceptions in that world, the Ulster Orchestra and Queen’s University. Each has withstood both physical and intellectual attack for decades. Bob held both in the highest possible regard and each helped to make him the man that he became.

My remembrance here of Bob Gilmore is based entirely on my time spent with him. My guess would be that he and I were together in Dartington for something approaching 2000 hours; in rehearsal, giving concerts as our ensemble Difference Engine, in late-night discussion, in the Balti King Indian restaurant, in my open-top sports car with Bob’s remarkable hair flying in the wind, in our respective apartments putting the world to rights (which usually meant shouting about the closure of Dartington), in planning concert programmes, in listening to music, in having (apologies but this is a distinct memory) burping competitions after drinking two cans of Dr Pepper each, in remembering Queen’s, in cooking, in debating, in drinking in The Steam Packet in Totnes and in a shared love of foul language…common among what we called ‘the Free Northern Irish.’

And we were free. It is remarkably rare to meet someone else from Northern Ireland who regards it as a country (or indeed anyone who does). Most people there have an opinion on whether it is either British or Irish (as does everyone else). Both of us carried UK and Irish passports and nationalities easily and combined that with an understanding that there are certain characteristics that make Northern Ireland unique. It is also rare to meet someone else who is from there and has left but retains a deep affection for it.

*

I looked over at him once in rehearsal.

We were planning a concert consisting of a Mozart violin and piano sonata, a Nyman piece and a work for three harpsichords by John Cage. It was Studio 3 in Dartington and we were tired. Both of us had done a long day’s work before meeting up. It was quite late. The College was quiet and there was a lowering summer light outside. Walking down the hill to meet him I could see across the Estate to the distant hills of South Devon. I have never before or since been somewhere as beautiful as Dartington.

I looked over at him as we played the Mozart. His hair bounced around over the lid of the piano and we phrased a section by me watching his head and he watching my bow. We had got it. We knew the music was right. In that second, in that place, in that music the world turned simply in joy.

This is what the really special people in your life give you. Yes, things can be difficult and trials continue because they too are a part of living but moments of simplicity do occur. For such a wise and staggeringly intelligent man, Bob was also a man of simple pleasures. He loved curries, he loved swear words, he loved burping, he loved music and he loved people.

I looked over at him as we came to the end of the movement. I held my bow still on the string as we would if there had been an audience present. It is in those fleeting seconds of pure time and total stillness that I remember him. He and I created that moment and no one else even saw it.

*

Bob was someone given to me at very particular moment in my own life. Dartington remains the most astonishing place I have ever worked. It is gone and now Bob is gone too. Or is he?

When I, as was the case with so many of us who decided to leave Dartington completely, had my own leaving event, Bob could not come to it. He told me that he would be unable to endure it. As it happened, that day he chose to go to Amsterdam on an early flight. I drove him to Totnes rail station at 5:30am. As the train to London pulled in we hugged. We knew that we would never, ever be in Dartington together again. He put his hand on my shoulder and said these words, ‘Chris, the best things in life never die.’

Bob got on the train and I waved him off. I knew he was referring to the College closure and to our friendship being able to outlive it. That moment of stillness at the end of the Mozart is why.

Bob will mean so much to so many because he had an immense personality with a limitless capacity for happiness and discovery and playfulness and passion. I know that my time with him was one of the great gifts in my life. I know that Dartington created deep fulfillment for all of us who worked there. I know that life can be cruel and ‘utterly, utterly shite.’ I also know that Bob proved it could be profoundly precious, intimate, rich and beautiful.

Goodbye Bob, you were a magnificent man. You are now truly the Free Northern Irish…the best things in life never die…

Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts 2014 London – A Reflection

The Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts Conference has a long history and has adapted and evolved in response to the digital world with which it engages. The digital humanities and digital arts each additionally contain their own meta-layers and historical paths. There is no other conference of this prestige that brings all these ideas, narratives and most critically people together in such as way as does DRHA.

There will be other more detailed reviews of the conference in due course and the University of Greenwich, who were this year’s hosts, also published proceedings and exhibition catalogues. As someone who has been involved with this community for many years, as Chair for six years and now for the third time, as Convenor for DRHA Dublin 2015 I thought I would reflect on the event this year in London with thanks to all at Greenwich for such a rich and provocative gathering.

The Docklands Light Railway is deeper than you expect it to be. It is only at the exit of Cutty Sark Station that the reason becomes obvious. Two minutes ago I was straining to see the glinting summits of Canary Wharf, now the towers are on the other side of the river. We have been pulled under by the driverless trains to emerge beside the fastest ship in its day. Cutty Sark is an icon now floating, suspended perhaps on a wave of glass. It is a ship of almost indescribable beauty but it is fine preparation too for the Royal Naval buildings that now constitute the University of Greenwich.

DRHA is an event unlike any other. I always find it pleasantly unnerving and ultimately rewarding to be at this conference as one of only a handful of librarians. Usually there are hundreds of us. I am sure that this feeling is replicated across the delegates though as we all; technologists, librarians, performance artists, historians, journalists, archaeologists, painters, literary theorists, musicians, theatre practitioners, psychologists, architects, futurists, social scientists, museum and gallery curators and and and…all have our own conferences in our chosen fields.

DRHA is not a field it is an entire horizon.

Born into the digital world close to the birth even of that concept, DRHA has deepened, adapted and transformed alongside its global parent. It, like the Web now encompasses more than could have originally been promised. DRHA is an act of chance annually repeated. A difficult conference to organise simply because of the deliberately welcomed inter-disciplinary tensions – this means putting a contemporary digital arts exhibestival (a seam between fine art exhibition and performance festival, and a word-grab for which I find myself unable to apologise), beside and alongside a conference on humanities computing.

Many times over the years we have asked ourselves the question why. Most DRHA convenors have such a head-in-hands moment somewhere around day two of the four day event when, deluged by requests from fifty or so disparate presenters to ‘sort out the technology’ which will consequently have fifty different meanings, the only solace is to be found in the eagerly awaited wine reception. But the best things in life are never easily attained and DRHA is one of those things. It is indeed, A Remarkable Thing.

Greenwich provided an astonishingly beautiful stage for the cumulative performance that is this conference. I placed one foot carefully before the second and alternated, moving onto – the most understated use of the term ‘University Campus’ in England. Greenwich is and also is not a campus; it is a masterpiece.

As the feet touch the ground here it is possible, at least for a librarian with a secret passion for military history, to regress in some way to boyhood adventure. This is the place that projected British power across the oceans. It resonates still in an ominous but handsome manner. It is an intoxicating place of past wealth and elegant violence. Greenwich asks you to dance, as would the most striking and most dangerous man at a masquerade.

And so we danced. The conference was an intellectual triumph, which is the achievement of course of the brilliant organisers led by Anastasios Maragiannis but also it is a communal feat. Great conferences are immediate communities. DRHA 2014 will be remembered as special by all because all made it distinctive. It was a conference of surprise; my personal favourite remains (no pun intended) the teddy-rabbit entrails swap….you….literally had to be there. But in every room, in plenary sessions, exhibitions, performances, panels and workshops there was an electric eclectic pulse.

DRHA has always had the ability to be unexpected and Greenwich delivered this consistently and intensively for four days. This is not a conference for the feeble or down-hearted. DRHA is not for the weary or nervous passenger. It is a flight for those who embrace turbulence.

My own knuckles, I am happy to report have lost their enamel glare but I am glad to have experienced the ride. As with all strong academic conferences, and at its heart DRHA is a strong academic conference – exceptionally well peer-reviewed and recorded – the benefits go beyond the programme. Very interesting people come to this event. DRHA can guarantee the delegate conversations unobtainable anywhere else. A grand claim I know, but as this has happened to me every year I feel secure in assuring you it will happen again.

Nowhere were these chances allowed a more staggering backdrop than the final dinner aboard a paddle steamer up the Thames to Westminster. Greenwich is so confident in its own beauty that its setting in the British capital can be forgotten but London at night from the water is unforgettable.

Bridges leap between skyscrapers and cathedrals, banks and castles, stations and theatres, hotels and orchestras, galleries and battleships. London proved itself to be what it claims….

So thank you London. Thank you Greenwich. Thank you DRHA 2014. Next year we welcome everyone to our own history-obsessed, multi-layered, madly energised and stunningly beautiful Irish capital. It too is the perfect platform for DRHA’s brand of unpredictable intelligence and unapologetic inquest.

Seneca is recorded as having railed against illiterate friends who kept lines of scrolls on shelves to impress other friends. The then British Prime Minister, John Major once said in an interview that had he not become a politician he would have liked to be a librarian because he enjoyed reading. A colleague of mine in the US once told me that the difficulty with some people is not that they do not know what libraries do but rather that they believe they do know.

Libraries have changed out of all recognition. Bookshelves were once their defining characteristic, no matter what their purpose or context. It is obvious that there are different types of library, but one overarching aspect needs to be established – they are places of shared experience.

Libraries are known and unknown, stereotypical and unexpected, unwieldy and pocket-sized, physical and virtual but they are always for communities.

Books are a different matter. Books can constitute a library but a library can operate without them.

A library is two things at once – a fixed cooperative of materials and readers and an unfixed collective where both readers and materials are removed, replaced and recycled. Libraries are still and fluid at the same moment. This remarkable state is achieved by the conjoining of concepts, in the form of books and other information, and of conceivers, in the form of authors and readers in the same space at the same time.

Libraries have been publicly doomed in the eyes of many because of the web. It is clearer now that libraries’ state of kinesis and stasis simultaneously has allowed them to adapt to the digital world and retain a foundation upon which to do so. Libraries are about what they have always been about, in that they are about people interacting with information regardless of the community or the format.

Although traditional activity has also increased libraries have fundamentally re-formed since the web, becoming part of it.

A library is one thing in a university or school, another thing in a public square or converted van, another thing in a hospital or prison, another thing in a business or court, another thing in a place of worship but it is always a library if it is open to a group. It is not a library if it is in a private house and it is this negative that defines the positive, that is for a library to be so named it must be open to a defined group of readers. There is no such thing as a private library.

In all these contexts a library can exist on shelves or servers. Libraries are firstly a construct and secondly a service. When both are present and providing access the library will exist through gates or websites, or as is most commonly the case in both environments.

The basic principle in describing a library is that it is an entity where humans interact with information and in this interaction is the role of the librarian. This role did not receive a happy prognosis in the early years of the web either. Librarians have been many things to many people, perhaps at our earliest priests, but the sacramental mediation between people and ideas has been changing ever since. The dawn of the Internet was no more a threat to librarians than was the first printing press.

The purpose of librarianship, or the professional practice of managing library services becomes ever more complex. The profession reflects the compound forms of information storage and retrieval, the growing breadth and depth of curatorial development and intellectual interpretation of collections and the variety and interdependence of readers.

It is the presence of professional librarians however, which also define a collection of materials as a library. This is the subtlest and perhaps the least predictable aspect of a library, and it is a feature that is likely to continue to change with technology. Examples of this change are ‘Patron Driven Acquisition’ where readers select materials, crowd-sourcing of metadata on digital collections where an element of cataloguing is performed outside the library staff, and personalisation of services whereby readers interact with library collections independently of librarians.

It can still be said though, and until profoundly new business models are developed it will remain the case that a library’s materials in both print and digital form are acquired, catalogued, classified, circulated, inter-loaned, delivered, developed, relegated and withdrawn by professional librarians and other supporting staff.

The contemporary library has evolved though to be inclusive of materials and information used by its readers beyond that held by a particular library. This is no different to processes of inter-library loan and reciprocal borrowing rights between the world’s libraries. The digital world appears to the reader to be quicker, simpler to search and provides immeasurably more information than the printed world. This new world demands more expertise of more librarians to ensure systems interoperability, legal compliance, user authentication, clarity of interface design, financial sustainability, digital preservation and service quality.

The library for some readers may not look like a library but the web doesn’t just happen. The same people in print libraries manage digital libraries on the same principles. The Internet is not a natural phenomenon.

A library is a series of processes but it is also a human construct. It is therefore a living entity, which fulfills our needs. Libraries are places of escape and transformation. They provide silence and support, solitude and sharing. They are spaces filled with occasion. Children obtain a first taste of adventure in libraries and adults relive and discover within their walls and on their websites.

In her novel, ‘Sexing the Cherry’ Jeanette Winterson uses the phrase ‘empty space and points of light’ to describe our human journey. And if we look at a library’s architecture and occupied shelves this seems a good answer to the question, what is a library?